Estelle

“H-hello... Uh... s-sorry, my horns... I accidentally broke your office door with my horns...”

Estelle is horribly self-conscious about her giant horns, which are not natural to her race but were triggered by her Oripathy infection. It’s a constant struggle for her not to withdraw from her friends and allies due to her anxiety and self-loathing. However, she’s not anxious during battle, where she stands firm as a 4* AoE Guard, able to Block-3 after E2 promotion and survive through waves of enemies.

Because Estelle doesn’t want her allies to see her fighting, she has adopted a self-sufficient fighting style. Her Skill 2, Sacrificial Strike, gives her a large ATK buff, but prevents her from being healed by allies for the duration (although passive healing from Talents like Perfumer’s Lavender or Angelina’s Part-Time Job still work). While Sacrificial Strike is active, Estelle relies on her Talent, Self-Healing, which restores HP whenever an enemy dies in a square surrounding her. Because Estelle can attack multiple targets, she can rack up multiple kills at once and heal herself for a large chunk of HP.

Despite her 4* rarity, Estelle is not a very beginner-friendly Operator. Like other AoE Guards, in order to really shine, she desperately needs to be promoted to E2 so she can Block-3 and attack 3 targets at once. Her high DP cost (another common trait for AoE Guards) can be a barrier as well. Even once you get her on the field, triggering Sacrificial Strike at the wrong time can mean certain death, especially if she’s blocking multiple enemies at the time. However, because of her self-sustain and AoE strikes, a skilled Doctor can rely on Estelle to hold off hordes of weaker enemies virtually indefinitely.

• AoE Guards are the exception to the “What they gain at E2” rules. Upon promotion to E2, on top of their other improvements,  they gain the ability to block an extra enemy (from 2 to 3). Since their trait allows them to hit the number of enemies equal to their block amount, this represents a potential butt-kicking increase of 50%.  That is a significant increase, and is why AoE guards (like poor “Tier-Lists-Don’t-Exist-In-AK” Savage) often get overlooked and discarded at lower promotion levels.